Squash Magazine: Tim Wyant: After School Special

After-School Special Urban Squash Programs On the Rise By Tim Wyant, World No. 115

On a Saturday afternoon in May 2000, two teams of middle schoolers played each other for the first time on the back courts of Harvard University's Murr Center. The seemingly inconspicuous match, pitting Boston's SquashBusters team against its New York City counterpart, StreetSquash, was widely celebrated in the squash community. In attendance were some of the sport's most prominent figures like former hardball star John Nimick and current Harvard coach Satinder Bajwa. This magazine even made the event its summer issue cover story. No, everyone seemed to insist, this was not just any old match between a bunch of kids. What, then, was it? At the very least, it was a pulse-check on two after-school programs whose chances of survival, in the eyes of more than a few skeptics when the organizations first got started, had not been good. StreetSquash, only a few months old, was still in its infancy, but it was alive and kicking—or swinging. And swinging well, as it turned out: the 13 girls and boys from Harlem beat their Cambridge and Roxbury opponents easily, 12-1. But if Greg Zaff, SquashBusters's founder and executive director, was at all disappointed by his team's loss, he had little reason to dwell on it. The idea for a squash-focused after-school program for inner-city youth first came to him years before when he was a master's student, funny enough, only a five minute walk away at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. It was just the idealistic subject of an essay then. But now it was a real life program, chugging healthily along in its fourth year and on its way to building a facility with eight courts and three classrooms on the Northeastern University campus in downtown Boston. SquashBusters, moreover, had spurred the creation of StreetSquash. Might that mean, observers wondered, that more programs would pop up around the country? For some, it even gave reason to bring back the long-repressed hope that maybe, just maybe, squash in America would someday outgrow its elitist clothes and become a more mainstream sport. More than two years later, the momentum continues. The New York and Boston programs, which play each other once a year (SquashBusters avenged its first loss with two successive wins over StreetSquash), have experienced remarkable growth. When Zaff started SquashBusters in 1996, he was the organization's only employee and it operated under a modest $70,000 budget. Today, SquashBusters employs six people and has $500,000 to spend in the next year alone. StreetSquash, which is now starting its fourth year, has the same size staff as SquashBusters and an only slightly smaller budget of $440,000. George Polsky, StreetSquash's founder and executive director, is also significantly increasing the number of students in his program. Until now, StreetSquash (like SquashBusters) has worked with about 50 kids each year; starting this season that number will be 120. In all, by the start of this academic calendar, SquashBusters and StreetSquash will have exposed roughly 280 inner-city youth to squash and raised—from individuals, businesses, and foundations—$2.4 million to run their organizations. And SquashBusters will experience another surge of growth when construction of its squash facility is completed next fall. The building, which broke ground in May and required an additional $6.5 million-fundraising effort, will essentially guarantee the program's long-term future and enable it to work with hundreds of kids a year. What's more, after-school urban squash programs can now be found outside of Boston and Manhattan. Philadelphia's SquashSmarts is going into its third season, and Roc'N Squash gets off of the ground this fall in the Bronx. Both programs are considerably smaller than their predecessors—in terms of class sizes, budgets, and staff—but they are still young yet. The salient point is that the SquashBusters model is spreading. All this is not to say that the US squash community is in the midst of radical change. If the overall landscape is shifting, for the moment it is only happening at the margins. And questions remain about these programs' limitations. Can they, for example, ever produce truly great players? And can smaller squash markets like Hartford and Providence eventually have programs of their own, too? Polsky and Zaff answer yes to both questions. They also point out that the questions don't exactly get to the heart of what their organizations are all about. Ultimately, SquashBusters and StreetSquash are focused on creating structured and nurturing environments to help inner-city kids overcome the obstacles that have been placed before them. Squash happens to be the hook, but it is just one part of a larger picture that includes community service activities, mentoring, and, most important of all, academic tutoring. Still, squash does have its advantages as an after-school program sport, mainly because of the kinds of people who tend to play the game. Many of the programs' volunteers are doctors, lawyers, educators, or other professionals. Practices are held at places like Columbia and Harvard, and the Harvard Clubs of Boston and New York. Matches are against teams from Groton, Milton, and other prep schools. While these kids have grown up in economically depressed communities, in such programs they are regularly exposed to an unusually affluent world. Whatever the specific reasons may be, the programs are producing results. StreetSquash students have experienced an across the board improvement in grades. Eleven SquashBusters students have received full scholarships to private high schools, and of the 20 kids who graduated from the first SquashBusters class, 16 will start college this fall. Perhaps most importantly, the kids enjoy the programs, and they openly acknowledge that the programs have taught them invaluable life lessons. It seems that inaugural match was worthy of its celebration after all. Ed. Note: Since writing this article, Tim Wyant accepted the Executive Director position for Roc N'Squash, which uses the courts at Fordham University.

After-School Special

Urban Squash Programs On the Rise